Daily AncestorLung fever
Lung fever is a folk name for pneumonia, a fever with infection and inflammation of the lungs.
Lung fever was the plain-language name for pneumonia: high fever, cough, chest pain and hard breathing. It turns up in mortality schedules, diaries and obituaries.
Pneumonia killed people of every age; one famous doctor called it the old man's friend because it often ended a long decline quickly. Because there was no way to test the cause, lung fever could cover several kinds of chest infection.
As seen in a recordCause of death column, 1850 to 1880 federal mortality schedule
Henry Ott, 72, M, W, Widowed, Germany, December, Lung fever, 8 days
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Daily Ancestor. "Lung fever." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/causes-of-death/lung-fever. Last checked 2026-10-01.